


you so know me (pinch me gently)

by dinosaur



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Diners, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Bigender Character, Demisexuality, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Multi, One Night Stands, Original Character(s), Other, Recreational Drug Use, Relationship Negotiation, Smoking, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 03:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3962251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/dinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn thinks even if he wasn’t less sexually inclined than an off-white paint chip, the running line of One Night Stand Hall of Famers rotating through his doors at 5 AM would put him straight off the practice. Wednesday is, sadly, one of the least sad ONSHOFs. Zayn seems to pick them up like strays.</p><p>One day, he’ll put it on his CV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you so know me (pinch me gently)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [groundopenwide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/groundopenwide/gifts).



> For the prompt, "Asexual Zayn." Hope this goes good for you, hon. <3
> 
> Sincere thankies to H, for the beta and the love, A, for the love&love and various others for the generalized and constant support. Also esp to the mods for this, I am thankful for your patience and your care in this exchange, sorry for the difficulties, but you have made this exchange v nice and safe, thank you.
> 
> Brief mentions and discussions of sex, anxiety and vague d/s. Title from _I Wouldn't Mind_ by He Is We.
> 
> Zayn is asexual. Niall is demisexual and bigender and uses both he&she pronouns. Harry is genderfluid and uses ze/zir pronouns. Liam wears skirts. Louis wears stains.

 

The grease is particularly virulent today.

Zayn leans his elbow on the end of the counter and watches Wednesday Vest&Joggers ply into the pile of bacon in from of him. He’s got on a look like he’s sitting down for GCSEs; duty, resignation and a kind of horrified fascination. Zayn’s never sure why _Just Yoking_ has so many regulars, honestly. The counters are always two sticks shy of shining and the food runs the line of overpriced or overpriced and gross, depending on how many times the cook has argued with her wife on a day.

“Looking good,” Zayn says, because he’s kind like that and he may not know Wednesday Vest&Joggers by name, but he knows him by the grimace he gives in return and the way he always relaxes when Zayn makes little asides to him.

“Bad night,” he says, picking at the edge of a grease puddle.

“Mm,” Zayn says, noncommittally. Every Tuesday night is a bad night for Wednesday. “Have a scone.”

Wednesday smiles up at him, the edges of his mouth sad and greasy. He takes a blueberry one and Zayn mentally adds 2.74 to his bill.

“It’s just,” Wednesday says, the jangly bracelets on his wrists clicking as he terries at the scone, “It seems like such a good idea when I go out yunno. Bit of fun, just a small shag.” Zayn blinks at the edge of a serviette he’s folding. A small shag. Honestly what on earth –

Wednesday is still talking, “- the beginning is always good and the clothes off part and the -”

Zayn waves the serviette like a surrender flag, “Bro. No.”

“Right. Too much.”

“Definitely.”

“Just – you don’t ever think that? Bout like Tuesdays?” Wednesday droops into the stool a little bit, looking disarming similar to the bacon slopped over his plate.

Zayn thinks even if he wasn’t less sexually inclined than an off-white paint chip, the running line of One Night Stand Hall of Famers rotating through his doors at 5 AM would put him straight off the practice. Wednesday is, sadly, one of the least sad ONSHOFs. Zayn seems to pick them up like strays.

One day, he’ll put it on his CV.

“Nope,” he says, dropping a smile as he goes to head off a child’s straw explosion at booth 4.

Two hours later, after Wednesday has swayed off, two crumbled tenners laying on the counter Zayn almost wants to shove under a blacklight to check for mysterious substances – one of the sadder ONSHOFs literally trips in through the door.

Balancing two plates in each hand, Zayn spares Harry a glance just long enough to make sure ze’s not bleeding. Again.

“Table 3,” Zayn says, on his way past.

Harry is still clutching at the edge of the doorframe, trying to look like ze isn’t clutching at the edge of the doorframe. “Right. Of course. Thank you, Zayn.” Harry tries for a smile.

Zayn will tell zir when he gets back from the kitchens that ze has something white crusting at the corner of zir jaw. Probably. His mouth curls into a smirk as he drops the dishes into the wash bin. It’s not his fault Harry is a messy eater.

“Fucking shitting fucking lard,” Jovie screams from the grill, probably at the grill. Zayn takes the long way around the kitchen, throws a small click-click handgun back at her when he gets safely to door. Kerrie is leaning with their head in their hands beside it, like they wish they had an excuse of grimy customers to also escape. He pats their shoulder, commiserating.

“Get out, Malik. Can’t believe this shit. Entire diner gone to bits, fucking –“

Zayn closes the door on it, presses a hand to his temple for a moment. Growing up with a gaggle of siblings means it’s not anything new to have shouting rows as a matter of saying close the door or pass the pepper, but sometimes it’s a little too much like being back at home, feeling squashed and surrounded at all sides.

The diner’s moved into post-8’clock rush now, though. And the silence is notable, all the regulars ignoring the shouting with ease, the non-regulars ignoring it with a distinct lack. He snorts and grabs a sketchpad from behind the till and toast from the counter as he winds his way to table 3.

Harry is propped up against the wall, blinking into the bright sunlight. The white is still on zir jaw and Zayn clamps down on a smirk.

“Hey.”

“Heya,” Zayn nods down, “This seat taken?”

“Hmmmm,” Harry drawls.

Zayn rolls his eyes and puts down the plate, hooks a foot around a chair to plop down tiredly. He opened today which means his feet and calves are already fairly aching.

Harry picks at the toast, looking a tired queasy. Zayn goes to nudge Harry zir mineral water, then realizes – “Shit. Sorry, babes. One sec.”

Harry waves a hand, “It’s –“

Zayn flicks a finger back as he gets up to the supply closet to get a gross (“has to be lukewarm, Zayn, it’s about balance,” “it’s gross, Harry”) bottle. He takes a second to give Table 4 a quick pepsi refill as well. When he drops back down across from Harry, he’s still got on his customer smile.

Harry smiles back the same, over-bright and plastic.

Zayn drops the smile. “Right, did you not need this then, afterall?”

Harry turns whinging and noodly, grabby-handing over the table, “Nooo, gimme. I’m poorly, Zayn, have pity.”

“Oh, I have pity,” Zayn balances the bottle on Harry’s temple.

Harry sighs like the bottle feels good against zir’s clammy skin. Gently, Zayn rolls the side of the bottle over Harry’s head a bit.

“Mmm,” Harry murmurs, eyes closed.

“Bad night?” Zayn asks, quiet.

“Good club. Good pull. Bad schnapps.”

Zayn laughs a bit.

“No more. From now on, gonna do only healthy treats,” Harry nods a bit. “Like jello shots.”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

“Yes.”

Zayn rolls the bottle a bit more and then nudges it against Harry’s cheek. “Drink.”

“Yessir,” Harry mumbles, mouthing at the side of the bottle. Zayn very determinedly ignores the thrill that sends down his spine. No one like Harry should ever be so casual about saying yes sir and looking so pliant mouthing a water bottle.

Zayn doesn’t wanna shag zir, but that doesn’t mean the image of Harry following his orders, easy and trusting, letting Zayn take care of zir, doesn’t feature in some very vivid daydreams he’s had.

He lets go of the bottle, puts it in front of Harry’s face so he doesn’t have to look at it. His sketchbook is still on the table, charcoal in its sleeve inside the ring. Zayn flips it open carefully, avoids the sections with phonecall doodles and sloppy notes from class, other ONSHOFs, moves to the back where the sketches turn darker, lines bold and a little messy: Harry’s hands, Harry’s shoulders, the curve of Harry’s jaw, that little ringlet of Harry’s hair that always bounces with a life of its own.

They’d sorta stumbled into it, Zayn doodling the bend of Harry’s elbow – it was interesting somehow – on a napkin and then talking about Zayn’s courses this sem. Draw a stranger until they’re no longer a stranger. Zayn thinks he may be nearing the close of it. The thought makes his throat dry, his heart a little overfull.

“Thanks again,” Zayn says, still looking at the book.

Harry swallows noisily. “I don’t mind. It’s great, they’re great, Zayn.”

Zayn bites at his chapped lip, makes a vague throat clearing noise, “Right, well best you don’t get toast bits on them, then.”

Harry pauses with the toast hanging in between two fingers, “Would I?

“You eat with your tongue.”

“Do I?

“Yes.”

Harry hums and finishes pulling the toast into zir overly large mouth. No insult, just fact. Ze takes a swig of overpriced water and settles back against the chair, hands lax on the table. Zayn nudges them together a little bit and Harry goes with it easy, easier than any model Zayn’s had.

Zayn sketches the line of Harry’s hands, big and strong, smudges the end of the stroke like the paint chipping on Harry’s fingernails. He tilts the charcoal towards them. “When’d you do em?”

Harry sighs, a curl fluttering in the gust. Ze looks down at zir hands morosely, “Day before yesterday. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Put a clear coat over top?”

Harry smiles at him.

Zayn raises an eyebrow and blows a bit of dust off the pad. Not like the diner can’t take it. Wouldn’t even notice the difference, probably. “No, then.”

“I have a very busy schedule, Zayn.”

“Right, uhuh.” But there’s a small tinge in Zayn’s chest. He knows Harry has a busy life. Knows that ze is social to the extreme and does something in arts or performance, didn’t bother with uni or grimy food services jobs, lives in a flat that ze can describe with “one of the rooms” instead of “over in that corner,” probably doesn’t get called names when he takes out the bins at night, definitely doesn’t have to sub cats for cuddle partners.

It doesn’t mean anything, except for how it feels like it does, sometimes.

“Z?”

“Hm?”

Zayn flicks a line for Harry’s forearm, the strong energy of it, resting a little tensed on the table.

“Y’alright?”

Zayn’s back goes prickly, “Yes, why?”

Harry hums softly, “You keep wandering. Just wondered.”

Zayn sighs. He just wants to leave and go home to his maine coons, put on something sleepy and fall asleep reading the newest Ms. Marvel. He doesn’t understand why that’s hard. “Tired,” he says, eventually.

The knobs of Harry’s wrists are weird.

“Nap?”

“Job, Harry,” Zayn reminds zir, then reminds himself to look up and see if anyone in the diner actually needs him to do his job. One person is asleep on their table and two more are staring out windows, looking sad. All of them are in vague, various stages of disarray. Zayn shakes his head.

“What,” Harry wriggles zir shoulders.

“Just wondering why so many people come here post-shag, yunno,” Zayn draws a slashing line for the open v of Harry’s shirt, shakes his head at the lace visible and draws it in messy crosshatch.

“Hmm,” Harry has on zir pondering face, which looks something like a cross between a joking face and a shitting face, “Maybe it’s the aura of the place.”

Zayn loops circles for a few neglected buttons. “Right.”

“Really,” Harry says, too serious.

“Right.”

“You have an amazing aura, Zayn. Very persimmon-twist, some cinnamon,” Harry’s hands flutter like ze wants to illustrate it.

Zayn rolls his tongue over the sharps of his teeth, thinks at Harry sourly, _people don’t just say shit like that_. But of course, Harry does. “You can move your hands,” Zayn says, gesturing towards them with the charcoal.

Harry’s hands move, one tugging the plate towards zir, the other reaching across the table to draw a line down the side of Zayn’s forearm. Zir hands are cool, like always, but the touch feels scalding, feels like it draws all the power of his body as it goes, flexes all of his muscles with the motion.

“Harry,” Zayn says, too rough.

Ze blinks at him, the set of zir jaw unwieldy. Zir hand stays pressed to Zayn’s arm.

“Toast,” he orders and pulls away.

He doesn’t bother with the strange pattern of Harry’s shirt, just sketches some rough, marine animal blobs, which – Zayn looks up at the shirt, may actually be what it is.

“They’re amoeba.”

“Fuck off.”

“No,” Harry pouts. Jeeze, what if they actually are amoeba.

“Fine,” Zayn concedes, drawing the next one more blobular before moving onto the fall of ringlets around Harry’s collar. They’ve gotten long, curling less now than when Harry chopped them about zir shoulders. Zir jaw is different too, somehow, feels sharper under Zayn’s charcoal as he draws without looking. It’s strange, sometimes, to notice the passage of time in other people’s bodies.

When he starts in on zir lips, Harry goes still until –

“Are you blushing, Monsieur Malik?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Harry!” Zayn drops down his charcoal.

Harry cackles, stays mostly in the same position while snorting laughing hard enough to shake the table.

There’s a sharp call of “Zayn” and he looks over to see Kerrie gesturing to their watch, and then at table 7, which looks impatient.

Shit.

Zayn pops up, ignoring the twinge in his calves, leaves Harry laughing to zirself. Serves zir right, anyway.

Zayn takes the customer’s order, apologizes a bit, pulls out a bright smile and gets a reluctant one in return, then does a few more refills, clears one of tables and then takes another table’s order for dessert waffles – whatever, it’s not his cholesterol count.

By the time he manages to wind back to table 3, Harry is no longer there, but a 50 note is tucked precisely into the pages of his notebook and his charcoal is back in its sleeve.

Bad at goodbyes, Harry is.

Zayn traces over the too sharp line of a jaw, the too soft line of a curl just touching it, thinks quietly, _same_. Then, he thinks of the smudge of white still on Harry’s jaw and laughs hard enough to hurt his stomach.

 

The next few days are quiet, or quiet in the way that routine can be, even when everything is loud and too harsh against his skin. He prays more than he usually does, texts more varied angry-frustrated-resigned faces to Ant than usual, gets more selfies back from Danny and Ant than usual. He gets a few good remarks from people in Lit on his child development paper. It tides him over.

Gets him to the quiet drizzly Sunday morning shift where Liam comes in without a shirt.

The thing about Liam, Zayn thinks – watching as Liam stands, a furious embarrassed red in the doorway, clutching his short jacket around himself – is that weird things happen to him. And it’s not really his fault. It’s just like the world sometimes looks at how he kinda accepts it happening and says, ‘Oh. I can do that to this one.’ It’d be funny if it didn’t make something in Zayn’s chest go dark and over-baked raw.

“Oh, _babe_ ,” Zayn says, into the lull that’s several grannies glaring over at Liam, taking in his clubbing skirt and disheveled appearance and general unkempt morningness.

Liam tightens his hold on the jacket, “Help?”

Zayn refrains from rolling his eyes and giving the wrong impression. Of course Liam would ask if he’s gonna help. Honestly. “Liam. Of course.”

He gestures Liam towards the hallway, the employee backroom. He goes, head ducked and shoulders hunched.

“Jovie! I’m taking 10!” He calls as he follows Liam. The grannies can fill their own tea if they need.

“Fucking fine!” Jovie shouts back.

Zayn rolls his eyes and opens the door for Liam.

“Thanks,” he says, ridiculously.

“Uhuh.”

Zayn lets the door swing shut and clicks over the lock. Liam’s stood in the center of the room, less hunched but more chagrined. A silence sits between them for a moment, before Zayn can’t take it anymore. The laugh builds in his stomach, curls him over, still hanging onto the doorknob.

“Zayn,” Liam whines, before he’s laughing too.

Zayn’s breath gets stuck in his chest, bubbling everywhere, the laughter making his limbs sort of loopy with air loss. Liam’s progressed to these giggles that shake his entire body, the jacket free from his grip to flap in the air and Zayn can see it’s actually torn, a splotch of red curving over the bare side of Liam’s torso and -

“Oh my god,” he jerks back from the door, nearly trips trying to get over to Liam. He doesn’t look hurt. “Are you hurt, Liam, Liam, what’s –“ he gets a grip on the jacket, shoves it to the side with Liam blinking down, shocked at him, laughter dying out in his throat with a weird sound.

Zayn stares down at the dark red and it takes a few moments for his vision to focus back from panic. “Oh.”

“Zayn, what are you –“ Liam looks down at his own chest, not pulling back from Zayn’s hold on his jacket, keeps him twisted to see his side. “Oh.”

It’s lipstick.

A giant stain of it, spread across the whole of his sides, reaching down into the waist of his skirt. Cherry red like that bright kind Harry likes because it pops, presses against Liam’s skin, the mess of it artful in a way Zayn morbidly appreciates. Whoever did it had intent.

Zayn is abruptly tired.

“Right, sorry, I thought,” Zayn says, bland.

“No, yeah, of course,” Liam is still looking down at his side, looking down at Zayn’s hands on him. Zayn pulls them off, lets go and steps back some. Only, Liam follows, sways like he’s not conscious of doing it, tipping back towards Zayn. There’s a flutter of something weird in Zayn’s stomach.

Zayn realizes he’s still staring at Liam’s stomach as well. Oh, hell. He jerks his head up, shoves a hand over his face.

“Z, it’s fine,” Liam whispers, follows with a too close gentle laugh.

No, no it’s really not.

Because Zayn likes Liam, likes Liam’s body, but Liam doesn’t just like bodies.

Liam obviously enjoys his body and other bodies and his body with other bodies. Has mentioned pulls with pride and talks about cuddles as a sort of one-way track only drivable post fuck. It makes Zayn listless and vaguely ill in ways that really would be best left alone. He’s never told Liam.

He’s just a customer, Zayn reminds himself. He doesn’t have to tell him anything. Doesn’t matter if maybe he wants to, if maybe he thinks about how the shape of the back of Liam’s head would fit into his hand or how they could watch Marvel marathons with their legs tangled together for hours. Doesn’t matter.

There’s a sharp rap to the door and Zayn’s eyes spring open. Liam is still shirtless – still in front of Zayn, looking too understanding for something he doesn’t understand.

“It’s been 12 minutes, Zayn.” Kerrie says, “I appreciate you, but I will not die for you. Get out here,” they pauses, “please.”

“Yeah,” Zayn calls. “No, yeah, sorry, I’m – “

He turns away from Liam sharply, turns in his locker sequence without thinking about it. “Here,” he says, digging out a very close to clean shirt from his bag. It’s got a giant snake on it and it’ll clash horribly with Liam’s skirt but, who the fuck cares, “Should keep you good enough to, you know.”

“Not draw any more looks than normal on the tube?” Liam laughs dryly, taking the shirt.

Something eases in Zayn’s shoulders. “Yeah,” Zayn nods. He knows strange looks on transit, too.

Liam gives him a smile, curled sad at the edges and it should really not be possible for one person to look so sincere. His side is still smeared with lipstick and god knows what else.

Zayn breathes out through his nose, “Maybe the loo, first?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, hah.”

“Yeah, course, soz, I’ll – “ Liam bobbles his head towards the door.

Zayn bobbles his head back and snaps his locker and lock closed.  He waits at the edge of the door for the click of the restroom to echo down the hall and then heads back to deal with the now 7 occupied tables and more than a few angry people waiting on awful overpriced food.

A lovely, colorful migraine blooms in his left temple.

He juggles two plates of waffles, a thing of syrup, goes back for jam, goes back for a different thing of jam, clears 2 tables and closes 3 cheques. The rush swirls around him, drags at his feet, makes his shoulders tense and his smiles feel like they’re cracking. One table and order blurs into another until Deandre is tugging on his sleeve, tugging him into the back hall.

“Enough, go home, Malik. Jeeze. You’re gonna scare off the customers, you look worse than the food,” She pauses, finishing a twist. “Which is saying something, considering, you know. How bad the food looks.”

Zayn prickles, “I look great. You’re just mad I might take some of your tables.”

Deandre breathes out through her nose loudly. Her earrings are swans today. Better her than him. “Yeah,” she says, sounded annoyed and also uncaring, “You do look great. It’s disgusting. Go away.”

She leaves him in the hall.

He stands there, still pressed, as all his aches start to make themselves known. There’s a spark of pain at his lower spine and his hands feel claw-like and his ankles may actually be taffy.

Deandre is probably right. Annoyingly.

He turns back to the employee room, promises himself a hot shower when he gets home, some mindless sketch time. There’s a note on his locker and abruptly he realizes –

“Liam. Oh, fuck.”

It’s not like he was yearning for awkward contact afterward, but that has to have been the rudest. Good thing Mum wasn’t here, Zayn thinks darkly. He’d been on booths and the leftside tables, no moment of time to look at the counter, where Liam always is.

He stares at the folded note for a second more before tugging open the flap.

‘Srry I had 2 go, didn’t mean to ask for help and then just leave. thank u, i’ll return soon!’ There’s a small lopsided heart in the corner, beside it, smaller with less smooth lines ‘hope ur ok.’

Zayn leans his head against the cool metal of the lockers.

Incredible.

He slams the door shut after his bag a little too hard, fairly thunders out the diner door, takes the steps and stops a little too fast, a little too cavalier. He knows he’s being a big baby, he just can’t stop it. Liam is sweet and kind and unreal and Zayn is so close to him and so far and it hurts sometimes.

He goes to the gym. Burns it off listening to Drake, punching at nonexistent things that don’t really exist and there’s probably a metaphor there, if Zayn could be arsed to find it. He punches the bag harder, instead.

When he crawls into the showers, he’s sore all over, sighing out against the tiles and touching his fingers to his arms gently.

It’ll sting tomorrow, but that’s the point. He scrubs his hair with a towel and clips off for home. He’s got a paper and a presentation and he has to talk to people about a group project, but hopefully he can convince them to let him handle the back-end research instead of the presentation bits.

Ugh, talking in front of people. He kicks his door shut and forces himself into focus mode, curled up in the middle of the floor with Kamala against one thigh and Bruce against another. His cuddle bookends.

He smiles down at them and pulls a textbook closer.

 

A few days later, he’s checking his phone absently, realizing it’s maybe been a week since he used it for anything other than essential functions like ordering pizza.

“Are you listening to me, Zayn?” Louis’ voice cuts in.

“Mm?” Zayn flips through a message from his dad, Danny, Doniya. The alphabet isn’t being too kind to him today.

“I was talking about the Great Pizza Tragedy of our generation and you’re catching up on texts when you don’t text?” Louis tries to reach across to pinch at his arms.

Zayn leans back a step. “I text.”

Louis rolls his eyes ginormously and slurps a bit of bacon.

“And anyway, you reminded me of it,” Zayn says.

“Well, I am amazing,” Louis nods, “But your eyes should be up here, Malik, don’t be a rude boy.”

Zayn raises an eyebrow, phone still in hand. He’s not too worried about having it out right now. The diner is basically empty, the people who are in booths are slumped down so low Zayn can basically only see their nose and eyes. 5:12 AM isn’t a time for joggers here. One Night Stand Hall of Famers, Zayn thinks again, smug, knows it’s true from the eyeliner messed around Louis’ eyes and the fact that his shirt’s tag is on the front.

“Rude boy, rude boy,” Zayn sings at Louis, lightly.

Louis grins back at him, wired and fun in the morning in a way most people aren’t at all privy to. “You gonna finally show me some of your stuff, song bird?”

Louis is, however, far too interested in the things Zayn feels simultaneously the most proud and the most tetchy about, which most people probably are privy to.

“No,” Zayn sings at him, cuts off his scowl with a, “You can see the others though.” He’s usually distracted by the prospect of sketches of the other ONSHOFs, a handful of them are. It’s a bit weird, but they’re all the bit weirdest, so he supposes it makes sense.

Louis flops on the counter, nibbling at the edge of a bacon, “S’just not the same, Zaynie.”

“Whatever,” Zayn says, heading over to the till. He grabs the notebook he stuck under it earlier, absently checking on everyone’s glasses as he goes, still eyeing table 5’s orange juice when he drops it on the counter by Louis’ elbow.

Should be fine for a bit at least. The customer’s nearly asleep anyway. How _Just Yoking_ stays in business is a mystery to Zayn, anyway. The door opens then, and a burst of six people stumble in, loud and excited. Right, Zayn scowls, that’s how.

“Ooooh,” Louis crows.

Zayn frowns, looks down at him. He’s curled over the notebook, eyes bright and tongue in between his teeth like he’s really engaged in whatever he’s looking at and the drawings aren’t that good.

“What –“ Zayn notices the edge of the notebook. Blue. It’s the wrong notebook. It’s the blue one, blue for lyrics, blue for ridiculous song writing messes Zayn’s never shown to anyone, which, “Shit.”

“And what do we have here, Zayno?” Louis says, licking his tongue to flick a page with zest. “A present for silly ole me?”

“Don’t, Lou.”

Louis gives him a considering look. Like he always does when he’s subtly checking to make sure he knows the boundaries, knows they’re okay to breeze through.

Zayn swallows and leaves to go greet the new, noisy customers who have taken over two tables and a booth.  

He worries over it, in the back of his head as he takes a sunny-side order, waffles, waffles, more waffles and some cookies – people are weird – and brings table 5 yet another orange juice. Louis’ not necessarily mean, he just doesn’t see the point in fronting really. Would rather have a spat or have someone tell him I love you to the moon and back. Zayn has a quiet, half-shaky laugh over that for a second. The image of Niall shouting love to Louis like Zayn’d been shouted at, the week after they’d met.

But none of his ONSHOFs know each other. Except in Zayn’s books, Zayn’s stories. It makes something satisfied curl in his stomach, likes being their connecting bit. That settles him a bit, lets him fill orders without thinking about Louis still curled at the counter, plate pushed aside, intent.

When Zayn finally circles back around to the counter, under the guise of filling the sugar dispenser at the end of the counter, Louis has the book closed and his knee is jiggling a little bit. He eyes Zayn over for a second and then clamber-scoots down the three chairs to him, nearly knocking over two of them.

“What?” Zayn sighs and Louis flicks a finger at him.

“What, what? You’re the one who skittered away like a pup got your dress hem,” Louis spins the notebook on the counter, pulling Zayn’s eyes. Probably intentional. Zayn glares at him.

“No one says that. And you’re the one who –“ he cuts himself off, tries to breathe.

Louis’ edges go softer, his face shifting to less of an inquisition lead-in. “Hey,” he says and nudges the notebook at Zayn, gives him a way out.

Zayn looks at it, thinks about how Louis, this loud and bubbling presence in his life, is now the only person who’s ever read these things and he yearns. The thing inside him that won’t let him throw the notebook out, that leads his hand in the dark corners of his room back to it time and time again, yearns for someone to see it. Really, truly see it. He thinks he trusts Louis to do that.

It’s terrifying.

Zayn shakes his head a little bit, grips the side of the counter hard to prevent himself from trying to disengage or leave.

Louis eyes his hand like he knows and then straightens his back and flips open the notebook. “Right, so, it’s sappy and dramatic and so totally gross, bro.”

“Wow,” Zayn says, before a laugh bursts through his chest.

Louis smirks over at him.

Zayn sticks his tongue out back at him, feels his muscles relax minutely.

A finger runs over the back of Zayn’s hand, Louis hand coming up to cinch around Zayn’s forearm.

“I love them,” Louis says quietly, tugs Zayn in closer by his arm. Zayn lets him, looks at the line of Louis’ jaw closely, because it’s got to be unreal. “Zayn, stop glaring at my beautiful skin and listen.” Louis pinches his arm.

“Ow, you shit,” Zayn pinches him back and it dissolves into a mini slap fight, where Zayn does get to test the edge of Louis’ cheekbone. _Real_ , Zayn thinks breathlessly, _too real_.

“Zayyyn,” Louis whinges, always prissy when he doesn’t get just his way. And when he loses impromptu slap fights. “Listen to me, you soggy apple core.”

“Wow,” Zayn says, “Dangerous. Watch out for the Tommo, he’ll get ya good with apple cores.”

“I’ll core you,” Louis looks at him, eyes intense and wraps his fingers around Zayn’s wrist. He breathes out slowly and watches as Louis keeps watching him, pulls the notebook close and flips through pages easily until he stops on one. Zayn inhales sharply, watching the familiarity. “This,” Louis says, “this one is the best.”

Zayn clears his throat, glances down to see the page and freezes. It’s the one, the one from a few months ago when Zayn was just starting working at Just Yoking. The one where he’d asked if he could see the shape of a future in someone’s gestures, the color of a promise in a laugh, the texture of a kiss in someone’s name. The one where he’d wondered if it was possible to see it in several people’s, at once.

“Lou,” Zayn says, quietly.

Louis rubs his thumb slowly against the inside of Zayn’s wrist, sends goosebumps down Zayn’s spine. “It’s got a great melody,” he says and Zayn’s a little surprised he could pick the notation out in the corners, “and the hook is just – amazing and you know the lyrics are just. _Ace_ ,” Louis finishes, smiling a bit, gives Zayn the opportunity to lighten the mood if he needs to back off a bit.

“Bah,” Zayn says, taking the opportunity, tries to settle his heart, “Poor taste.”

“Not me, never,” Louis sniffs, squeezes Zayn’s arm.

“This coming from a guy who wrote 4 separate songs about boners,” Zayn says, deadpan.

“Excuse you,” Louis flicks him. “It was five songs.”

“Oh right, how dare I.”

“Exactly.” Louis nods, and then grows quieter, “And I didn’t write them alone.”

Zayn knows about Louis’ mysterious writing boy, knows Louis is afraid of what it’s meant for him to want someone so much in ways that have nothing to do with their body. Knows Louis is prickly and achingly defensive of his writing and his heart and his friends. He knows what this means to Zayn to be here right now.

“Thank you,” Zayn says, softly.

“Course.”

Louis leans their temples together for a moment and when they breathe, it feels in sync. It stays a little like that the whole time Zayn wanders off to bring out dishes or drinks and Louis makes small asides about pages, asks for a pen like he’s asking for permission and when Zayn gives him one, writes precise scrawls of notation across the little bits of Zayn’s soul he’s bared.

Louis is exceptionally gentle.

He leaves eventually, tucking the notebook back until the till carefully and tucking a smile into the corners of his mouth just for Zayn. Zayn smiles back, feels helpless and good.

An hour and two juice spills after Louis’ gone, Zayn comes in from the kitchen to find a familiar blonde-headed hoodie slumped over the counter.

Two in one day. Lucky luck, Zayn thinks as he finally wipes down table 8 and slips the decent tip away in his book. He comes around to the counter eventually, with a passion tea already seeping in one of the blue mugs. “Hey you,” he says to Niall, depositing the offering.

“Hey you,” Niall says, smiling small, cheek smushed in a hand.

“Pronouns?” Zayn asks, quiet.

“He please,” Niall says.

Zayn nods and watches Niall commune with the tea for a moment. His hair’s still a little damp and curling, the hoodie jacket combo looking wrinkled and sad over a similar-state tee. It’s not Zayn’s job to make comments, it’s just that he worries. He worries about all of his ragtag regulars, but some of them, he argues, just need a little more worrying after.

He maybe feels a little cut open still from the morning.

“Be back, kay?”

“Yup,” Niall says, tracing the edges of the mug with his weird knobby fingers. Zayn thinks wistfully of his misplaced sketchbook.

Instead, he digs a muffin from the display case, ticks an order up for mash and sausages, looks over to see Niall curl small around his tea at the counter. He bites his lip and goes to give a pinched face customer at table 6 a tower of pancakes and a bland look and then circles back to Niall, settling next to him on the frontside of the counter.

“Welcome back,” Niall says, turning into Zayn. Eyes too blue and too close.

Air catches in Zayn’s throat.

 _Jeeze_ , Niall’s softness should come with a warning. It’s alright when he’s grimy and pushy on a morning and Zayn can glare at him and feel armored against everything else. It’s unfair when he’s all pinked and looking like he rolled around and out of stranger’s bed and needed cuddles, but got shown to the door instead.

“Yeah,” Zayn clears his throat. He touches the soft curve of Niall’s arm, just above his elbow, because he can’t resist. “You okay?”

Niall’s shoulders curl. He gives a sort of half-shrug.

“Not really an answer,” Zayn says, soft.

“Yeah, fine,” Niall says, turning to smile too big at Zayn. He leaves his arm still under Zayn’s hand.

He doesn’t smile back. “But?”

The corners of the smile wilt.

Niall ducks his head down, his fringe falling soft over his eyes, calling to Zayn’s hands. He presses his free palm against his side to resist the urge. “Sometimes it’s just hard to like, navigate or whatever you know?”

Zayn does. Niall glances back at him, eyes distant. Zayn knows he’s remembering their first conversation about sexuality, their half-stumbling half-smooth “full on ace” and “half, here, haha.”

“I do, Ni,” he rubs a gentle circle into Niall’s arm.

“Right,” Niall shakes himself a bit, leans into Zayn without seeming to realize he’s doing it. “So sometimes, the during is good, but then the after is like a bit of a hit and miss.”

Zayn frowns, “Was –“

“Zayn! Table 6, now!” Margaret calls from across the diner. Zayn winces and edges around Niall’s back to see her waving a plate in the air behind the kitchen counter so vigorously, it’s a miracle nothing’s flown off. Or it’s just a lot of sticky grease. Yuck.

Niall laughs softly and pushes at Zayn’s side with his elbow, “Go.”

“Just a sec,” Zayn says, squeezing back before hurrying off to the pick up the plate.

Margaret raises her eyebrow at him.

“It’s a sad pathetic one-night stander, leave off it,” Zayn says, knows his cheeks are a little too flushed to get away with it.

“Right. Tell yourself that, wouldja?” Margaret hands him the plate and turns back to the fryer.

He looks down at the plate and empathizes more than he should with a deep fried pile of sad looking jalapenos. “Right,” he says, quietly.

By the time he’s dropped off the plate, mopped up a mess by table 4 and put in two more orders and picked up the mash and sausages, Niall has stretched out into his usual two-seat sprawl. He comes up behind the counter this time, reminds himself he’s not paid to touch the corner of Niall’s jaw or the wiry lines of his arms. Niall smiles and Zayn smiles back, automatically.

“Here ya are,” Zayn says, shrugging one shoulder like a sorry.

Niall waves a hand and pulls the plate close, tucking in immediately. “S’fine, Zayno. You’re at work.”

“Yeah.”

“Your job to keep us all well fed and drowning in gravy,” Niall says, with a genuine smile, even as he’s distracting.

“Right,” Zayn says, watching the careful way Niall keeps himself open and layered in turns. People must underestimate Niall a lot, Zayn thinks. “Stop me if I step too far, but this person last night, didn’t like,“ Zayn makes a vague gesture as Niall spoons at his mash, “do anything – ”

“No,” Niall says, quiet. His breath puffs out, soft and frustrated, “No, it’s just more what they didn’t, yeah?”

“Ah.” Yeah. “Can I do anything?”

Niall smiles up at him, eye crinkling like he’s too much for his body to contain and stupidly, Zayn thinks you deserve to be a universe, you deserve to be awed. It’s Louis’ fault, really, bringing out all those ruddy lyrics. Zayn’ll get him back. Him and Niall too.

“Already are, mate,” Niall says.

“Well,” Zayn flounders, takes a second to catch up. Right, he’s doing something. Not near as much as Niall does. “Alrighty, then,” he says, tweaks Niall’s nose.

Niall laughs and it knocks something easy and loose in Zayn’s chest. _Calm down_ , he tells himself. _Be careful_ , he tells himself. _He’s gorgeous and not yours_ , he tells himself.

Niall stays for a good hour, seems to get some color back in his petals, bloom from his wilt a little bit. He leaves, humming something that sounds poppy, puts a bounce in his step as he goes. Zayn spends the rest of the shift feeling too much in too many waves, fond and overwhelmed and quietly, loudly, wistful. The sound of the diner seems to follow the same, loud, loud rushes and steady clipping atmosphere.

He goes home to a small flat with small sounds and the contrasting absence feels too loud in his head, like the things left to scramble around are echoing all the more for the lessening.

Tries not to think too hard about the notebook he places on top of the green one, of the sticky note taped to the wall above the bookcase.

He eats chicken out of a tub, reminds himself to thank his mum yet again for the leftovers she presses into his hands, the way she just smiles and huffs a laugh when he says no, mum, haven’t tried that recipe yet. He could. But they both know why he doesn’t.

The telly runs in the background, bad news, bad news, worse, better – oh no, wait, still bad. His eyes glaze over a bit. He turns it off eventually, when the reporters start making jokes about some American’s sexy new ad campaign.

“Yuck,” he says quietly to Kamala.

She screeches back at him. Contritely, he goes back to petting her.

He lets her lick the ends of the fork as he throws the tub in the sink, runs water over them both.

“C’mon, sweetie,” he scritches under her chin, “Let’s go find your brother.”

Kamala raises her fluff of a tail high and trots off without a backward glance. Zayn checks the laundry basket and the bookshelf and under the futon and finally finds him curled up behind the window shades.

“Whatchu doing here, huh,” he pets at Bruce’s scruffy hair, “Not your usual place, bud.”

Bruce meeps at him and Kamala echoes from where she’s curled around Zayn’s legs. He smiles and pulls Bruce up, ignoring his continuing meeps and toddles over to bed. They’re warm, plopped over top of him, purring vaguely. He curls into his pillow, settles in for a nap which will hopefully ease the ache in his legs.

It’s nice, yeah. It’s all fine.

He scratches at Bruce’s ears and doesn’t think about the emptiness at the pit of his stomach, the prickle behind his eyes. “Cats are great cuddle partners,” Zayn says, quietly. He settles them closer. “I’m fine.”

He sleeps restless and too long.

 

On Wednesday, Harry comes in at 9:20 bright and flushed with a love bite right under zir jaw and Zayn’s stomach clenches in something like resignation.

“Hey.”

“Hello, Zayno,” Harry grins at him, dimples creeping. Ze’s gorgeous.

Zayn starts up the order, and heads to grab a bottle. “Good night?” he throws back, totally, absolutely nonchalant.

Harry sighs loud enough to follow Zayn into the pantry, chasing it with a wistful, “The best.”

Zayn leans his head on a shelf. 3 hours, 40 minutes. It’s fine. He can do this.

Harry is sitting crosslegged on Table 8 when he comes out.

“Get off the table. Now.”

Harry pouts but slides down and into a chair pretty readily.

He hands off the bottle and serves up two plates of sausage and veg to waiting customers, then trails back around to Harry. Ze’s looking wistfully out one of the windows. It’s ugly pouring today, the kind where it makes the world look like overwashed jumper lumps of metal and wood. Zayn despairs of Harry sometimes.

“Really?” he asks, tilting his hip against the table.

“Really,” Harry says, determined to a fault. “She was so. So wow, Zayn.”

“Yeah.”

“Like, just stunning, and so alive and the way she smiled made me feel like I’d never need another thing other than her to smile,” Harry draws a shape on the table and Zayn realizes it’s a heart. Disgusting. “Maybe she’s a new life force. A renewable source of energy,” ze continues.

Zayn’s thoughts flicker to Niall for a moment, is selfishly glad that they’ve somehow never come in at the same time, glad he gets to keep these little bits of them separate and just for himself.

“Right, well, do you wanna?” Zayn waves vaguely to mean, _let me sketch your horrible, wonderful face_.

“Yes,” Harry sighs happily, munches on a bit of toast.

Great.

The diner is a little busy, so Zayn keeps having to step away, and stop nearly in the middle of strokes but when he pops back a final time, to Harry’s 50 note, his ears still ringing of Harry’s praise for last night’s shining star, he thinks it might be one of his best pieces.

It’s scratchy and blurred at the edges, but the lines of Harry’s eyes are sharp and focal, the too-wide grin on zir mouth balances it, draws the eye to the deep dimple in the round of zir cheek.

It’s a lot.

Zayn closes the page too quick and is left staring at a doodle page filled with little body bits. He looks for a moment before he realizes. Louis, Liam, Niall. Only them. It’s not even labelled, and he doesn’t remember it. He thinks about them enough to draw them from memory, from _absent_ memory.

He slips down into the chair, a little stunned.

 _No_ , he reminds himself, _no, you can’t_.

His heart doesn’t listen.

It keeps him awake at night with the sound of Louis’ latest chord change progression, bothers him the middle of shaving with the feeling of Liam’s coyly offered bare legs. It makes him laugh into the jut of Niall’s shoulder when he spills tea all down his new blouse and curl a finger around a loose curl of Harry’s and pull.

It makes him fall into conversations with them too easy, makes him perk up every time the door opens and bring out orders fast and sit down faster.

It makes him encourage Niall through the research for a project proposal she wants next month, with the strategic use of strawberries.

“One more paragraph, babe, c’mon,” Zayn says, holding the strawberry plate in one hand while he cleans up another ONSHOFs’ dishes and sends her gently out the door, makes sure she goes the right way to the station.

She’s at least less visibly debauched than Niall, who’s come in with matching teeth marks Zayn can’t even call love bites on both sides of her neck. Whoever did it had good taste, though. They’re even and look carefully done. Louis would definitely approve, he thinks. Zayn would approve if he wasn’t nursing a bitter streak as wide as the channel.

“Are berries even brekkie?” Niall asks, voice muffled by the counter top.

“Yes,” Zayn says, “One more paragraph.”

“I hate it.”

“No, you don’t. One more paragraph.”

“You’re a broken record, Malik,” she grumbles, sitting back up at the keys.

Later, after Niall has sent it in successfully, they share the berries, curled over the counter, close enough their arms brush every time either of them move.

“If you were a broken record, though,” Niall says, “you’d be Backstreet Boys. Singing I want, I want, I want, over and over again.”

Zayn sniggers, attacks her with sticky juice fingers until they get told off by Margaret. Again.

 

The days filter like sun through a patch of leaves, swaying and lovely.

He swats at Louis’ hand reaching into the pastry display and gets top marks on his presentation. He teaches Harry how to blow a perfect bubble and Ant gets accepted to a work-study. The mosque gets enough donations to fix its roof and Safaa gets a medal at a debate meet. He works at an awful diner that’s always in a tip, some way or another, but it’s somehow nice.

“Bro,” he gasps at Liam one day, “You did it!”

Liam grins and ducks his head, smooths down the edge of his skirt. It’s wrinkled today, but Liam’s hair is perfect, buzzed short and faded to a fauxhawk that looks so good it’s ridiculous, and the thought that he must’ve remembered to bring product for it, so he could show it off proper to Zayn in the morning post-mess-up, makes something flare hot in Zayn’s stomach.

He pulls Liam close to him, reaches out to touch the buzz, waits until Liam leans gently into his hand. They smile at each other, soft and silly in the middle of the diner with a rush bustling around them.

“Do you like it?” Zayn asks, running the backs of his fingers over the amazing texture.

“Feels weird,” Liam wrinkes his nose, “but yeah, yeah it’s –“

“You,” Zayn grins at him.

Liam crinkles back, happiness curving his body like gravity made light. Zayn laughs and it tucks him close to Zayn’s body, tilts them together, so easy and familiar, Zayn thinks he could get used to this, thinks he might already be.

Liam has waffles that day and Zayn reaches over and smears whipped cream on his nose. Liam tries and fails to lick it off, so it’s only kind for Zayn to lick it off for him. It makes Liam’s face go soft and squishy with surprise.

The image carries him through the next few days like a caffeine shot. Louis notices on Friday, grins at him and bangs on the counter too loud.

“Lookie, lookie at this. Sup with you, Zayno?”

“Nothing,” Zayn says, throws a wink over his shoulder as he heads to grab more serviettes from the supply closet.

“Saucy!” Louis calls, sounding delighted.

Zayn zooms through his shift so he and Louis can have a noughts and crosses tournament on spare bits of greasy paper. Whenever Louis wins, he tries to literally rub it in Zayn’s face and whenever Zayn wins, he pushes it down Louis’ unwashed shirt, citing the need for a clean anyway.

Louis licks his face and is generally disgusting. Zayn noses his temple and thinks he could stay there forever.

The next day, none of them are there and Zayn shrugs it off. But the next shift no one comes in either and it sits funny in his bones, like he’s missed a step going downstairs.

 _Tomorrow_ , he tells himself.

 

A week of shifts, a week and a half pass and nearly none of his ingrates come in, the place chock full of noisy awful suits and noisy sweet children, but no sign of any bedraggled stragglers regretting or luxuriating in messy disgusting bed affairs. Zayn’s not pouting, but.

“Stop pouting, Zayn,” Deandre says, fixing her makeup somehow without looking at it. Birds are amazing, Zayn thinks idly, as he continues not-pouting. “I’m serious. It’s my job to look cute and pout at the same time. Step off the strop.”

 _A right full-on strop_ , Zayn thinks fondly of Harry’s ridiculous face, and then sighs into his arm.

Deandre scoffs in disgust.

His courses are fine, he’s finally managed to get a handle on the group project – which is to say, he has very little to do on the front-end and gets to sit with books for a long time with a cat in his lap. Ant and Danny and him go out and get supremely fucking pissed one night and well regret it in the morning. He just doesn’t get where they all went is all, it’s all fine he just doesn’t –

“I fucking know, Zayn, oh my goddamn god, get a grip,” Carl snipes at him, “Like an actual grip, on something that’ll make you feel good about yourself and about the world in general.”

Zayn straightens up from his sprawl on the counter, feels himself going cold. “Fu –

“Whoa mate,” Niall pops up from behind Carl, “Maybe you oughta not be such a fucking soggy apple core, huh?”

Zayn grins, his muscles all but jumping forward at the sight of Niall.

Carl opens and closes his mouth and then gather up a grimace of a smile to launch at Niall and wanders away to possibly do his job, probably to pout. Zayn couldn’t give a fuck.

Niall glares after him, dropping huffily into a seat at the counter and reminds him suddenly, vividly of another spitfire sitting in the same seat not too long ago.

 _Soggy apple core_. Zayn draws back, frowning.

“Z?” Niall asks, head tilted, “You ‘kay?”

“Yeah,” Zayn shakes his head, “Uhm, sorry, pronouns?”

“She, please, and it’s fine. Not your fault some dude’s a fucking arse.”

“Right,” Zayn says, mutters something about her order. He busies himself with a few tables, but no one really needs anything and Niall’s sat, leaning down on the counter with her bracelets bright and skirt the wrong way round, looking at him expectantly.

He stalls with a trip to the loo, splashes water on his face enough to get the edge of his shirt. He doesn’t know why he feels weird about it. It’s just the time, probably. Throwing off his perception. It was probably Niall who said it in the first place. Easy to get that confused, really.

“Right,” he says to the mirror, quietly.

He closes his eyes for a second, prays for peace, to stop drawing weird, half-formed conclusions, to smile easily.

Niall’s got her tea already, when he comes back out, either nabbed it herself or Carl got it for her. The rest of the room’s how he left it, easy and undemanding. He sidles behind the counter.

“Hey.”

“Heya.”

Silence sits between them, unfamiliar and unwieldy. Niall’s hands twitch around the cup and then clench. Their breathing sounds too loud in the space between them and Zayn leans heavily against the wall, feels like he needs something solid under him. He doesn’t know how things have gone so tits-up so fast, or even if anything is at all.

“Right so,” Niall says, hoarse, “I, I have something to tell you,” Niall swallows, looking down at her hands, “Something kinda maybe important.”

Zayn tenses. “Okay?”

“So, you know how like, you have different members of the One Night Stand Hall of Fame?”

This isn’t happening.

Zayn doesn’t know if he makes a sound, feeling cemented to the floor, but Niall jerks a glance up at him and then looks back down quickly.

“What if we – if we knew each other?” Niall says, almost into her cup.

A roaring fills Zayn’s ears.

“What if,” Zayn’s voice drags out of his throat, hurts, “you were all sleeping together, pretending you didn’t know each other to me?”

Niall is motionless, doesn’t respond.

“How long?” Zayn bites out.

“I –“

“How long, Niall?”

She looks shaky at the edge, flush growing across her skin.

“A month?” she whispers.

Right. A month. A month of Zayn curling them close, pressing secrets into their hands like flowers to keep safe and watered, playing games and learning how to make them giggle from across the room with a single look. A month of them having sex and coming in flushed and giddy about each other and looking at sketches of each other in Zayn’s book and hearing Zayn talk about them like he can’t help it and keeping Zayn separate and still, forever, always excluded.

“Ok,” Zayn says.

He turns around and goes to the kitchen. Bribes Kerrie with words he doesn’t remember speaking, to take his tables until he can throw up a few times, images pressing too hard at the back of his eyes - Liam's _lipstick_ , Louis' _boy_ , Harry's _renewable smile_ , Niall's _love bites_ , until he can stand in front of the bathroom mirror and convince himself the water on his face is from the tap. Until Kerrie knocks at the door gently, says, “You can come out now.”

Zayn glares at his reflection. “ Is –“

“Gone.”

He closes his eyes, feels the tension in his body snap like a too drawn string, calls hoarsely, “Okay.”

He swipes his face with towels, messes with his shirt. The door opens under his hand too easy.

Kerrie is leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed and scuffed shoe bouncing. Zayn gives them a small shrug, doesn’t know what else to do.

“Ever think maybe you should fix your shit?” Kerrie asks and Zayn hears the underlying _instead running from it_.

“Kerrie –“

“I didn’t say don’t come back,” they say, softer and then push off the wall and turn back to the kitchen.

Ice spears down Zayn’s esophagus. He stands there, for too long, trying to let it thaw. Niall isn’t out there. Niall is gone. Niall wouldn’t come back to soon, may not come back at all. And then has to deal with the rushing pain of that thought, sticky against his chest and awful, useless feelings.

He creeps back into the diner. Reminds himself he’s only here till 11, hardly any time left at all.

Niall is gone, the counter clear and feeling like it stretches too long across the room. Zayn bites his tongue and goes to take an order from an impatient table 4.

“Sorry about the wait,” Zayn says and slips back into the push and pull.

11 is an eternity away. Zayn counts by tables. One table, two tables, three, five, fifteen. Jorden is 12 minutes late getting on duty and Zayn adds another two to his count waiting.

“Sorry,” Jorden says, coming in smiling and far too lax to deal with.

“You’re late,” Zayn says, stepping around him to get to the backroom, disregarding the trillion and two times he’s been late to his own shift, the four separate occasions he’s been threatened with a sacking.

He leaves from the backdoor, steps out into the grime and mess of the alley and digs, on the edge of frantic into his bag. He digs out a near-smushed pack, one lone cig in it, juggles his phone at the same time he juggles for a light.

The phone rings as he argues with the lighter, flicking it four times before it catches. Finally. He tips the pack into a bin at the end of the alley as he lights up.

Ant answers, laughing, “Zayn!”

“Hey,” Zayn says, breathless against the first drag of the cig, the cloying pounding in his heart. “Hey, anyone around today?”

“Yeah, bro?”

Zayn leans against the edge of the alley wall, listens to the roar of traffic, a distant rail, someone cussing out a cabbie. “Need to get out of my head,” Zayn says, finally, inhales nicotine sharply.

There’s silence and Zayn knows Ant is nodding, “C’mon up.”

“Thanks,” Zayn rasps and heads up.

They’re safe. Everyone is safe when they’re together like this, careful with lighting up and careful to keep water on hand and careful to push out the sharp-edged coffee table from the couch. Still, it’s good. Gets things to slow down, to quiet down. It’s all soft and easy and none of it goes too far. Just enough.

Sometime around 4, Danny asks about one of the projects Zayn has going, maybe something for Civics, maybe something for Design, who knows. Zayn waves it off, ignores the pile of papers on his desk to load up The Incredible Hulk.

Things blur.

 

Zayn wakes up in weak sunlight, feeling just as frail and watery. Even the light drizzle against the window makes his head ache. There’s a note taped to the side of his face and he brushes at it, tries to unstick it without generally moving at all.

It floats down finally, and Zayn tilts his head carefully to read it. _Z, back in 30, prob wont wake, but water on table, dont get up_ and a curly heart like the one Zayn does on his sisters cards. He would roll his eyes but that seems too much work.

The gentle pit-patter of water interspaced with wheel splashes rocks him back to sleep and he only vaguely hears Danny coming back in. Nudging him aside to settle back against the headboard with something he’s reading in his lap. Zayn allows it, because Danny’s always been a good pillow. And if he’s here, Zayn doesn’t have to reach for a water bottle.

The day ticks away.

Danny’s steady page turning and absent back rubbing lulls him down into something like meditation.

“You gonna be ok?” Danny asks, as they finally start to get around at 3, when Zayn’s phone beeps with a class alert.

“I don’t know,” Zayn says, too honest.

Danny sighs and tugs him in for a hug, lets him go with a firm punch to his shoulder, “Call me, okay?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says, absently.

He makes sure his wallet is in his pocket, phone in his hand and leaves, only a little wobbly on his feet.

Zayn lets himself back into his flat with a sigh. The cats aren’t crowded at the door, which means someone took care of feeding and watering them. He reminds himself he owes everyone a round of burritos.

Standing in the doorway for a long minute, he feels too big for the space, too small for everything. Finally, he shakes himself and goes to find his bag.

He has class.

He does a roundtable on learning styles for young children, makes a 10 foot plastics statue with someone he knows simply as Blue and lets Perrie breeze into the studio and cheerfully throw out the dumpy cig packs in his bag.

“You sad fuck,” she hisses at him. But, she boops his nose on the way out, so he knows she’s just worried, not mad.

“Yeah,” Zayn says, to the splotchy mess of acrylic in front of him.

He puts off thinking about his Thursday shift until literally the moment his alarm goes off. Bruce makes an annoyed _meerp_ by his ear while he lays there, letting it ring and ring long enough that one of his phone alarms starts going off.

“Sleep sucks,” he tells Bruce, wisely, “but so does not-sleep.”

He makes it to work only 4 minutes late and that’s because he spends 1 minute debating if he can just quit and 2 debating if he can get someone to cover his shift in the next 60 seconds and 1 minute debating trying to learn levitation so he can fly away to Antarctica.

Jovie is tapping her foot when he finally closes his locker door and heads out past the kitchen.

He shrugs at her, knows that Carl is on shift before him and he lingers too long anyway. They’re not short-staffed.

His skin feels tight as he peers into the diner though, legs prickling with readiness to turn straight around if any infamous ONSHOFs are sitting out, lying in wait. Like snakes, Zayn thinks, miffed.

But no, it’s just a gaggle of old people, drooping into seats and a few other sorry mismatcheds. He takes a deep breath and enters the fray.

“Please look less like death,” Deandre whispers to him as he passes by her.

Right.

 

Friday he spills ink all over a vest and Saturday, his shift goes similarly, with customers just as prickly as he is, and no sight of any of Them and Zayn’s not bothered, he knows They’re supposed to be gone. He wants Them gone, anyway.

He throws himself into projects, ruins 3 straight shirts and actually reaches the word limit on a paper for the second time ever. Then, the third.  

At night he writes songs made straight of synonyms for ‘I don’t care’, follows it with one that uses 300 words to repeat how sucky people are, dedicates it to non-aces. Then, he shoves the notebook into the corner and vows never to use it again.

“You alright, sweetie?” his mum asks, intense against a backdrop of someone screaming about something on the telly.

“Ya, mum,” he says, phone against his ear as he messes with Kamala’s tail peeking around his leg.

“Mmm,” she says, noncommittal and then, distantly, “No, Safaa. I haven’t.”

Safaa says something about ‘oh woe, the unproductive today!’ and Mum tells her to go do dishes, “Fix that right up.”

Zayn smiles a bit, curls his arms tighter around his knees.

“Alright,” she comes back close, “But just so you know, you’ve answered every single text from every one of us this week.”

Zayn freezes, clears his throat. “I’m trying to be, yunno, better?”

“Or you’re making up for a lack of something else,” she says, gentle. “No matter, I’m here if you need, sunshine, alright?”

Zayn swallows hard, clears his throat again, “Yeah.”

“See you at prayers next week. Love you,” her voice is chipper now, leading the way for Zayn to follow.

“Love you, bye,” he says, quiet and too tired, of a sudden.

 

The next few days are long and short, bursts of too-busy shifts and too-dull lectures. He takes too many breaks to breathe and curls around a new, brown covered sketchpad, breaks in the pens he’s been meaning to use instead of the usual charcoal. Doesn’t think about why.

On Wednesday, Vest&Joggers is back and so is Niall.

Zayn stops dead in the center of the walkway – looking at Niall, wearing a sharp blazer and a button up, obviously not from a wrinkled night on a stranger’s floor and a deeply worn expression. Zayn swallows and wanders behind the counter, sets up at Niall’s chair with a cup and flicks the kettle on.

Niall trails a little bit, but comes over and then looks up at him, eyes tired, says shakily, “you want me to go and I will, no trouble.”

And Zayn – Zayn knows Niall gets stressed by stress. Works hard to keep a level environment in life, at home, with the world in general. Knows the rough torn edges of Niall’s fingers are partly Zayn’s doing and he – he’s so tired of them not being there, he’s tired of not hearing Niall’s too-knowing people-watching comments and Louis’ stories and Harry’s bright ease and Liam’s steady crinkles. It doesn’t change anything, but it doesn't not change anything.

“Pronoun?” he asks, low.

Niall stares at him, mouth open and then closes it, opens to whisper, “she,” and then blinks fast against the wetness Zayn can see building in her eyes.

Zayn bites the side of his tongue, too. Aches to reach across the counter and tug Niall close.

“Thank you,” Niall says, firm. “I’m sorry –“

“It’s not, it’s nothing.” Zayn heads her off. He doesn’t wanna know, doesn’t wanna think about who’s to blame and think about how it’s probably him, “You like the place too, though I don’t know why.”

Niall gives him a disparaging look like _you know why_ , but doesn’t say anything. Zayn is glad for it, also doesn’t think that he’s ready for things to go too open and close to the heart yet, when he still wakes up and expects to find bruises in the mirror.

Zayn clears his throat. “Regular?”

“No, I’m – just toast please,” Niall says.

It pulls Zayn to an abrupt stop. Niall’s never had less than an egg, a waffle, something labelled a full dish in all the time Zayn’s known her. “Right,” he fumbles, “are you okay?”

Niall laughs humorlessly and Zayn feels his back prickle. Right. Stress. Anxiety. Niall’s told him before about performing, the awfulness of the nausea of the stage, the way it cycles and builds.

He calls for a toast, a bit sharper than he would normally and checks in with Wednesday Vest&Joggers. He looks a tip, all unwashed and lethargic at the edges. Zayn is gentle with him, curbs the frustration in the pit of his stomach.

It hadn’t occurred to him that they would come back hurting.

He doesn’t know why.

Niall’s there when he comes back, biting at her nails and messing with her phone on the counter. Zayn finishes the cuppa, grabs the toast off the counter to give to her.

“Here you go, Ni.”

Niall looks up, smiles small at the nickname, “Thanks Z.”

He watches her nibble at the toast for a bit, run a finger around the rim of the mug. Her nails really do look bad, bitten to the quick and tinged like they’ve been bleeding.

Zayn starts, “What I should have –“

“No,” Niall interrupts, dropping the toast.

Zayn leans back from the counter, aghast, “No?”

“No, I,” Niall flounders, a blush burning fast across her twisted face, “No, I can’t – it’s not a thing I can, with the stress and stuff and I just,” she stops herself, laughing like she’s breathless.

Oh, Zayn thinks. Fuck.

“I’m sorry, Niall. I –“

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine, fine. Just, need to not do it now, if that’s,” Niall eyes him nervously, “okay?”

“Yeah, fine, sure,” Zayn says. Then, wonders if that means they’re just supposed to continue in this weird half state space unto eternity. The thought makes _him_ ill. “So like, do you know when you might? Just cause I don’t know that,” Zayn gestures to the strange distance between them, “this is something I can do like, indefinitely.”

“No, I mean,” Niall shakes her hands, “I mean one of the others can talk to you about it. If, if that’s okay.”

Right, they’ve all had each other. Days and weeks and Zayn’s had his cats and a too big, too small flat and they’ve had each other. Fucking typical.

A hand touches his wrist lightly. Zayn looks up to see Niall worrying at her lip. She says quietly, “I haven’t seen any of them. Haven’t nearly talked – just to say, say what happened and then to say we weren’t gonna.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t,” Niall takes a deep breath and her fingers shake against Zayn’s wrist, “it wouldn’t have felt right.”

Something sharp eases in the ball of hurt Zayn’s been carrying for long enough to feel familiar. The relief is short-lived though. He has to decide someone else. Can’t address right now even though he feels okay to, built himself up to. Making a decision about it, to plan for it, is harder, in the face of the possibility of just not doing anything. Zayn watches Jorden entertain the meagre 2 tables by juggling empty salt shakers.

It reminds him of Harry, ridiculous grin in place as ze first picked up pepsi bottle to throw in the air. Didn’t mind when Zayn told zir off for it. Harry’s always like that, takes Zayn’s uneven bits in zir hands and doesn’t mind the scratches.

“Harry,” Zayn decides, ignoring the momentary flash of painhurtintrigue that lights in his stomach over the feeling of picking one of them out of the rest, them all tangled with each other in ways Zayn can’t reach.

Niall nods, tongues at her lip. “S’your next shift your regular tomorrow?”

And for the first time, it strikes Zayn that they know his regular shifts. Maybe they know his schedule specifically to come in when he does. He’s never heard any other staff talking about them, and they’re all fairly memorable. “Yes,” he says, quiet.

“Okay,” Niall says, small, pulls back her arm.

Zayn misses it, says, “Okay.”

“I’m gonna,” Niall gestures over her shoulder, “head out, if it’s okay - I actually have a meeting, I need to –“

“Oh. Yeah, course,” Zayn remembers it’s the 3rd, “Your thing, the pitch is tomorrow, right?”

Niall blinks at him for a bit, then a tentative smile blooms over her face, “Yeah, it is.”

Zayn smiles at her, soft. “Good luck, Ni.”

“Thank you, Zayno,” she says, still smiling. It sets something to rights in Zayn, lets him smile back as Niall drops a tenner and heads out to the door, moving a little quick like nerves let go.

Zayn looks at the door closing, the bright line of sunlight streaming through the window, for a while, trying to sort through the tangle inside him. He closes his eyes to send a vague prayer asking for guidance and strength. When he opens them, Wednesday is staring over at him.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just, didn’t know you had a thing.”

“I don’t – “ Zayn’s voice catches, “I don’t know.

“Riiiight,” Wednesday says, lets it drop by asking for another plate of sausage.

Zayn focuses hard during the shift, doesn’t let himself think about what-ifs or possibilities. Tomorrow hangs heavy in the air, chasing him off his shift and through his civics essay and his small dinner and tussling with Kamala and Bruce.

He sleeps restless, thinking about four other people sleeping somewhere in the city, also tucked into covers against the unusual chill, scrolling twitter restlessly. Same places, different spaces.

He puts his phone down, sets the alarm and stares at the ceiling. Kamala kneads at his side. He pets at her soft mane, “You go for me tomorrow, okay. They won’t know the difference.”

She hits him with her tail.

“Right.”

 

He sleeps in fits, woken by each movement of Bruce or Kamala, across the flat and come 8 am, he’s not in the most gracious of moods.

His Thursday shift is a short one, just 3 hours, but by the time he’s finally made it through the tube rush to the diner, and nerves have made it to his stomach, he’s thinking even that’s too long. Too long to sit with something like this in his head when he has to keep up with cheques and orders and fussy customers.

He bites at his chapped lip and times in.

Harry’s not inside, which – Zayn doesn’t know what he was expecting. But it’s certainly not for him to come on shift and work through an hour, and then two, and then two and a half and not see Harry anywhere. He bites his chapped lip near to bleeding, worries at the skin as he thinks of ways to tell all of them to fuck off, while smiling for children in highchairs.

Zayn’s taking an order from what going to be one of his last tables, 25 minutes to end of shift, when Harry slinks in through the door and sits down at booth 3. Zayn stares at zir for a second, annoyance burning.

The table has stopped talking.

Right. Zayn rattles off the order, glad for once that routine builds habit and he doesn’t have to expend a lot of effort to take orders anymore. They chime a yes and Zayn puts in the order, and fills someone’s glass of water, eyes on Harry, sitting primly in the corner, headscarf garish and red today.

He fairly stomps over, flips open his order book, “Hi, can I get you anything?”

The corner of Harry’s mouth twitches and zir hands fold on the table. “Hi, yes, can I have a –“

“Are you kidding? You made me wait this entire time just to pretend everything’s goddamn fine?” Zayn says, sharp and probably too loud.

“I,” Harry’s brow furrows and Zayn is furious at it for being cute, “I thought your shift ended at 12?”

It does. “So?”

“So I thought it might be better, if we could talk when you’re not on it. Didn’t want you to have to keep going away and coming back. Thought you’d rather be able to leave after, too, maybe.”

Zayn rolls his tongue over his teeth, to stop them from clenching.

“Was I wrong?”

“No,” Zayn bites, orders himself to take a deep breath. Harry was trying to be considerate. “No,” he says again.

Harry smiles and it walks the line of too smug for Zayn tastes. He walks away.

Come 12:07, Harry is still there, placidly, with a glass of sweating water that ze must have gotten from Jorden, who still isn’t looking at or speaking to Zayn. It’s made their shifts together a little rough and Zayn is sorry, but not sorry enough to apologize to someone who regularly refers to Doctor Who as the greatest cinematic masterpiece of all time.

He walks over with his bag over one shoulder, pushes at his hair a bit.

“Hi,” Harry says, just as polite as earlier.

“You could have told me.”

“Didn’t want you to worry about it, during your entire shift, I know you get annoyed if things happen and you can’t deal with them, like that time with Safaa –“

“Fine. I know, but I worried any way, Haz,” Zayn says, the nickname slipping out without meaning to, Harry’s face growing soft at it, like ze’s surprised to have heard it again. Zayn looks away, “But I didn’t know if you were even coming?”

“Oh.”

“Oh, yeah,” Zayn rolls his eyes.

“I’m sorry?”

“Fine,” he breathes out, “Okay.”

“Would you like to go to a bench?” Harry says, pointedly looking at Zayn still standing a bit away.

Zayn looks at Harry’s hopeful expression for a moment, the soft pleading in the sad twist of zir mouth. He supposes having the conversation in a place where all Zayn can do is look around and see the echo of moments with the others is a little pointless.

“Lead the way, Lassie,” Zayn says, steps back and rolls his arm.

Harry clambers up, asks, “Who’s Lassie?”

“Harry.”

“Just had to have been there, huh?” Harry pushes open the door, holds it for Zayn.

“Harry.” Zayn nods at zir and slips on his sunglasses against the afternoon glare.

Harry leads them around the side of the diner, along the street to an alcove Zayn had never even noticed before. Maybe it grew because Harry asked nicely.

“I would get it, if you would explain it.”

“I know you’re sorry. I know you’re gonna explain it. I know you know I’m gonna be annoyed and we’re gonna work through it, okay?” Zayn brushes the edge of zir arm with his fingers, “I won’t tell you to leave.”

Harry’s eyes are wet and it tugs something hard in Zayn’s throat, makes him stumble. Ze twists zir arm, catches Zayn’s hand, “I’m so sorry, Zayn. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Zayn shushes zir, pulls them close together so Harry can wind around him tight. Harry sniffs into his shoulder, shaking a little. Swaying them a little, Zayn rubs zir back, “I’m sorry, too.”

“S’okay,” Harry mumbles, fingers tangled in Zayn’s shirt.

“Not really,” Zayn whispers.

Zayn eases them both onto the bench, finally, leans them a bit apart so he can get his breath back and Harry can wipe at zir face. They gather themselves for a moment, Zayn breathing too deep almost and Harry messing with zir curls.

“So.”

“So.”

Harry sniffles a bit. “I can explain,” zir voice is a little too wobbly, a little too clinging. Zayn angles himself closer, tries to emphasize how firm he’s sitting on the bench.

“No stories,” he warns.

Harry’s already looking pensively beyond them, towards the street. “We met separately,” Harry starts, voice in a storytelling cadence.

It catches Zayn off guard.

“What?”

“We met separately. Niall and Liam went to the same footie match and me and Liam went to the same crafts workshop. Me and Niall went to the same golf club and –“ Harry stops to breathe.

“Of course you did,” Zayn says, faintly. It seems impossible, but, feels right. He tests the edges of it in his head. It doesn’t seem like Harry would lie, and they’re all prone to exaggeration but, this, this feels honest. _Of course it would be all of them_ , he thinks, a touch hysterical.

“And we all met you, here,” Harry catches his eyes, “Of course.”

Zayn looks back, feeling nailed down to the bench and struck to the core.

“And we got to talking and just chilling, hanging around without necessarily hanging, you know,” Harry adds a peace sign. What a ridiculous idiot. “And we just found out that we all knew you. Then your drawings. Found out we all liked seeing you on a morning, after, you know. Liked you. Liked each other _and_ you.”

Harry is smiling.

“I said no stories,” Zayn says, hands tucked under the bench edge so they don’t tremble.

“We didn’t mean to not tell you,” Harry barrels on, leaning in close, “it just, it felt so familiar, like it’s always been all of us, we didn’t realize you weren’t getting the fair end of the deal. And then we did and we didn’t know how to tell you and – we never meant to hurt you. We are so, so sorry. We want to make it better,” Harry finishes at a whisper, “If we can.”

The talking is mostly Harry, but Zayn can feel pricks of all of them underneath. Wonders how they talked about this and who said what and if they touched after or before or during.

Maybe it shows on his face, maybe they’ve has been let into too many of Zayn’s pockets and pieces of them all are curled around like fluffy stuffing, waiting to be pulled out to light, because Harry blinks at him and asks, “Can we talk to you about it?” without needing Zayn to say _yes_ , and _please try_ and _I hope_.

“About what?” Zayn needs the clarification and also the tangled hairs of Harry’s eyelashes are distracting, the color of zir irises too bright in the afternoon light.

“Us.”

“Us, what?” Zayn wrinkles his nose.

Harry leans in further, picks up Zayn’s hand in zirs. The contact is overly warm, feels _right_ like it always does. Zayn grips back without thinking about it.

“Us, like _us_.”

“You’re not making sense,” Zayn rolls his eyes, runs a finger along the side of Harry’s wrist to feel Harry’s hand clench reflexively. It sends a thrill down Zayn’s spine.

“Please,” Harry says, too intense.

The thrill grows. “Please what?”

“Let us all talk to you about it all, us all.”

The _all at once_ is underscored and Zayn has to think about that. These people, who have come to be such a force in his life, all in the same room at the same time. He tries to imagine it, the ways they could fit together – Louis’ arm over Niall’s shoulder, Niall’s nose against Liam’s, Liam’s leg pressed against Harry’s. And himself. Himself at the center?

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Where and when?

“The diner, of course.”

“Really, Harry?”

“Tradition, Zayn,” Harry bites at him, then turns serious too fast for Zayn to follow, “seems like the thing to do, yunno.”

He guesses he can understand that, yes. But – “my next shift isn’t for 3 days.”

“Hm,” Harry hums, plays with Zayn’s fingers. Zayn looks down at it, feeling mesmerized. It’s been a long time, feels like ages.

It’s not the deeper things he’s missed the most since he id’d, started bringing it up with prospective partners but the smaller ones. Someone holding his hand, someone touching his shoulders, a finger in his belt loop. He hadn’t realized, but they were all supporting that, feeding him that in little ways.

 _Intimacy in the in-between of the you and me,_ Zayn thinks.

“Okay,” he says, “Okay, that’s fine.”

“Really?” Harry looks surprised.

“Really. But how do you know it’s good for 3 other people?”

Harry dimples at him, laughs that little giggly laugh Zayn loves. “Already checked, didn’t I?” ze says.

Oh. “You shit,” Zayn bites down on his lip so he doesn’t smile back.

“Probably,” Harry shrugs, both of their hands moving.

A cyclist zooms past nearly too fast and dirt kicks up in front of them, sends them both brushing dust off their face and hacking.

“Charming,” Harry says, utterly blank and eyes narrow and red.

Zayn laughs.

Harry grins at him for too long and is caught, looking back. They’ve got him all wound up in their web, all of them moving points around his fixed center like they’re circling, circling, keeping him disoriented and glancing at the ground and the sky to try and find them.

The three days’ll be good probably. Good and necessary.

Harry says a soft goodbye, lingers against Zayn’s skin for too long and Zayn lets zir, closes his eyes and breathes deep for a second. It’s strange but, it feels like he’s never smelled Harry before. That strange intimacy of another person without a lot of smells to dilute their personness. Or without grease, at least. Ze’s all flowers and sharp sandalwood and warm something like bread, which makes him laugh quietly into the sweet spot between Harry’s jaw and ear.

“What?” Harry asks.

“Nothing, just,” Zayn pulls away a bit, “Missed you.”

Abruptly, it’s aching true. He misses the cock of Louis’ eyebrows, the soft splay of Liam’s hands, the scrunch of Niall’s nose; he wants them all here, not one by one, but at once, as a whole, as should be.

“We missed you,” Harry says, staring unblinkingly at Zayn as if willing him to understand some vast complexity.

“I know.”

Harry goes, quietly with a pull in zir shoulders like ze wishes classes and jobs and lives weren’t real. Zayn leans against the alcove and tries to find solid ground again.

 

He tries to find it the next few days, too; texts his sisters too many emoji and struggles through textbook chapters like they’re a cleanse. There’s a low grade tension in his spine at all times and he starts sleeping on his face more, letting Bruce curl up on his back and purr the long morning hours away. By Monday, he doesn’t know if he’s got a better grip on whatever it is in the air around him, but he does feel ready to test out the shape of it.

He’s wiping down the counter, 30 minutes into shift, when they come in; not together, but all at once.

He pauses, looks up to see them all, clothing well fitted for maybe the first time and faces nervous. He takes a deep breath and inclines his head slowly towards the barstools.

The settle one at a time, silent except for tapping or deep breathing or gnawing. Zayn eyes Niall.

“Niall,” Louis says.

Niall jumps, “Sorry, uhm. He please,” and then shoves a worn finger back to his teeth.

“Yes, thank you, but,” Louis reaches out and pulls his hand down.

Zayn watches it, feeling a tug in his chest like a magnetic field. Louis is _soft_ with Niall. It settles something inside of him. Silly, he wishes he could nudge them together, watch them forever. He pulls his eyes away to find Liam looking at him, nodding a bit, eyes gone liquid, like a sincere _same_.

He smiles at him.

Liam smiles back, reaches out a hand across the table and Zayn breathes out slowly and takes it for a second. It’s familiar, like nothing has changed. Like anything would. Zayn rolls his eyes with a grin and draws back. They must all have really incredible luck because the diner is relatively empty today, though Zayn has a feeling he’s still gonna be pushing the line of rude employee who gets complaints.

“So the truth is,” Louis says, launching straight in like the silence is bothering him. Zayn winks at him and gets a finger in return, “is that we haven’t handled things well. We’re doing a piss-poor job of it all, really.”

Zayn’s smile eases away. He runs a thumb along the towel edge.

“We’ve had a lot of trouble between us all, Zayn,” Harry adds.

“Lot of domestics,” Niall mutters and Liam and Louis sigh. There’s something there, behind it, weighing it down into something more and it makes Zayn prickly to hear, but the knowledge, the fact that they’re not working, is a selfish balm to it.

“So, we thought, change,” Louis slaps a hand on the table. "Change is good and important. Especially when what you’re doing isn’t kind to someone else you all care for a fair deal.” His eyes are bright.

The diner seems too quiet.

“Okay,” Zayns says, tentative.

Liam is nodding, “So, maybe it’s time to try out something not like, what we’ve been doing.”

Zayn’s spine feels cold. His fingers clench in the towel. “I’m not – it isn’t something to just _try out_.” _I’m not a fix-all. Don’t hang this on my shoulders. Please._

“No, I didn’t –“ Liam flubs the word and Louis curls a hand over his mouth, says, “Hold up.”

A hand reaches into his vision. He looks up, teeth clenched, to see Niall leaning forward in his chair.

“Hey, hey. Not like that at all. We’re not expecting you to be a catalyst or a solution,” Niall says, shaking his head a bit, “Just think maybe we could do with some nonsexy night happenings like,” Niall says. “Think maybe we’ve been doing it for all the wrong reasons, you know.”

And that’s – that’s easier.

Niall staring straight at him, forward and bright like always. Niall, in particular, who knows more of what’s locking up Zayn’s muscles and turning his mouth dry and sick than the others.

“Oh,” Zayn breathes, feels some of the tension ease out. “You’re – for real?”

“Yeah,” Niall and Louis chorus, Louis with a cracked edge of a scoff, Niall smoother but no less longing. They sound good together; balanced. Harry and Liam are nodding beside them and Zayn notices their hands are locked together, tucked by the sides on the counter edge. They’re all watching him – this ridiculous scene from out of film or something, coming here en masse to his work that he’s probably about to get sacked from, like he’s the climax of their plot and he’s just going along with it, always always has and –

Oh.

“All of us, together?” Zayn asks, voice a little shaky.

“Yes.”

“Yeah.”

Liam leans down to catch Zayn’s eyes, says quietly, “I’m sorry. I really do want this, even if sometimes I’m a little, you know.”

“No,” Zayn reaches for the back of Liam’s neck, pulls him close, “No, you always try, Li. That’s the important part. You’ll get there.” Zayn runs his fingers over the smooth line of Liam’s hair and watches his eyes flutter, watches the rest watch them, avid. “ _We’ll_ get there,” he says.

He draws back slowly, looks at each of them in turn, here together and eager. They all want this. _Okay_ , Zayn thinks.

“And we’re gonna argue a lot getting there,” Niall whinges, fidgeting.

They’re all smiling. Zayn laughs.

“Good,” Louis says, clapping his hands together a few times. “Let’s start now – Liam, that shirt is horrendous.”

Liam huffs and slaps at Louis’ face while Harry leans around him, on him, to tell Louis he has a stain the size of Russia on his shirt. Niall cackles.

 _Yeah_ , Zayn thinks. _Yeah, alright._

 

 

_\- 9 months later -_

 

 

“Order up,” Zayn calls, flipping the pancake almost too high. The stack beside him in nearly finished, just one more.

“Mm.”

There’s a head in the corner of his vision and then Louis is pressing himself too close against Zayn.

Zayn reaches out a steadying hand to the counter and shakes his shoulders, “Lou, you’re not supposed to be in here, get off.”

Louis sighs loudly, “Just did. Was lovely.”

Zayn wrinkles his nose. “Yuck.” He presses down on the center of the pancake.

“You asked,” Louis works his arms up Zayn’s shirt, stretches out the fabric so he can push his palms high up.

“Stop.”

Louis hands still. “Stop stop?”

Zayn rolls his tongue, flips the pancake again, says a quiet, “No.”

“Ah, then,” Louis mouths at the side of Zayn’s neck, sinks his teeth into the corner of his jaw. His nails dig in just enough to send sparks down Zayn’s torso.

“Fuck,” Zayn drops his head, let’s Louis laugh into his skin and reaches back his hand to pull Louis closer.

Louis hums at him, sucks a kiss lower on Zayn’s neck, then moves up to bite at his ear. “That’s a mighty fine burned pancake you got there, dear.”

Zayn huffs in exasperation and fumbles with turning off the hob, pulls the pan off to an unlit burner.

“What are you doing in my kitchen?”

“Oops,” Louis whispers.

Zayn looks over to where Niall is leaning against the doorpost, arms crossed, glaring at the two of them, looking soft and sleepy-eyed, with a pillow crease lined face.

“Trying to make you breakfast?” Zayn tries.

Louis drops his chin into Zayn’s shoulder, hard. Zayn hisses and gets a hand back to pinch at Louis’ hip. There’s a loud yelp in his ear then and by the time he’s wrestled Louis off him and bitten his shoulder, Niall is sitting on the counter with a plate of pancakes and the pan is in the sink, soaking.

“Hey,” Zayn says softly.

He wanted to bring it to Niall. Worked hard to not disturb the four of them as he climbed out of their mess of a bed that feels too big to be called a bed. A small city, maybe. With clinging inhabitants.

“Hey,” Niall says back, easily.

“Hey,” Louis flicks a finger at Zayn’s arm and sways over to Niall. They kiss for a moment, around the plate in Niall’s lap. Zayn breathes in the smell of batter and watches the way Louis’ back shifts like he wants to push Niall back, jump on top of the counter too.

Zayn leans over and tugs Louis back.

“Excuse me,” Louis snips.

“You’re excused,” Zayn says back, leaning over to give Niall a kiss of his own. Louis slaps at the back of Zayn’s shoulder and Niall laughs into the kiss and it’s half gross but mostly just familiar.

“Whichever,” Niall says to both of them, jumping down to grab more plates.

Zayn lets his hand run along the strip of her waist bared by the stretch for the cabinet, “Mkies.”

Louis leans around them to grab a pancake from the pile and roll it. He bites down into it and salutes at Zayn, heading back through the doorway to the bedroom. Distantly, he can hear him pouncing on someone who cries out and someone else telling both of them to fuck off.

Zayn laughs and grabs a thing of syrup and the butter as well as the pancake plate.

“Ohh,” Niall says, “My muscular hero.”

Zayn kisses him, “Yup.”

The toddle back to the bedroom, Niall with the entire rung of serviettes. Harry is sitting in between Louis’ legs, letting him braid zir hair while ze sways back and forth tiredly and plays with Liam’s hand. Liam’s got half his head buried under one of the pillows, half of it pressed into Louis’ thigh. Zayn isn’t entirely sure how he’s breathing.

“Li?” he checks.

“Blah,” Liam says, muffled.

“True,” Niall says, kneeing carefully up on the bed. Both Harry and Louis reach out to steady him. He grins at them, presses an off-centre kiss to Harry’s lips.

Harry pulls him close, snogs him deep enough to make him moan a bit. They all watch for a moment, Liam peeking out from the pillow and Louis leaning a bit to the side. Eventually, Harry hands inevitably inch downward.

“Right,” Louis pulls at Harry’s hair, “That’s enough. Zayn’s made lovely breakfast for us, everyone thank him.”

Harry blinks open zir eyes, dark and satisfied, says, “Thank you, Zayn.”

Zayn leans in to nose at zir temple for a second, trapping Niall in between them, where she hums a little, “You’re welcome.”

“Now you, Liam,” Louis orders, messing again with Harry’s hair.

Liam huffs into the pillow and then pushes himself up easily, muscles bunching nicely. Zayn winks in appreciation and Liam gives a little giggle, squishy and sleep warm like Zayn likes best. He leans over, mindful of the pancake plate on the edge of the bed and kisses the tip of his nose. Liam kisses his cheek in return.

Zayn drops down in between them all, his favorite spot and lets Liam and Niall met out the pancakes. They pass the syrup around, well-practiced after the Four Catasrophes of the past 6 months. Legs and hands brush everywhere they turn and it’s a little chilled for how low they have to keep the air-con to stop from burning each other up with so many bodies in bed. Harry’s even in a ginormous jumper that probably belonged to each of them at some point.

Liam drops a line about Harry’s psuedo jumper baby-bulge.

“Do you know,” Harry starts.

“No.”

“No, we don’t, Harry.”

“Do you know!” ze continues, louder, “that if our relationship was a baby, it would be due soon.”

Zayn stares down at his pancake. Then, when that doesn’t seem enough, looks up to stare at Harry.

Ze’s fidgeting with zir bun, looking nonchalant. Niall is still eating and Liam and Louis are sharing a look like, ze’s your datemate. Zayn sympathizes.

“Right,” Liam says, finally. “Thank you, Harry.”

Harry kisses him a sticky _you're welcome_.

There’s a meowing vaguely down the hall followed by a quiet huffing. Kamala and Loki, probably. Though in their house, it’s really a tossup. _Their house_. Zayn smiles as he takes a bite and nearly dribbles syrup down his front.

They talk quietly while they eat, all of them a little tired still from last night, 1 or 5 shots too many.

“But we fucking won trivia _good_ , didn’t we, Payno?” Niall cheers, squeezing Liam’s arm like a teddy. Liam drops his head on hers and grins bright. It’s disgusting. Too much cute. Zayn should put an embargo on it.

“Yeah we did,” Liam says, happily.

“Disgusting,” Louis says, licking his fingers free of syrup.

“Yes, you are,” Liam says primly and Niall cackles. Harry chortles quietly, already clearing up the plates so they can move to Stage. 2. The Morning Cuddle. Zayn appreciates it, hands over his plate and cutlery for stacking.

Everyone cleans up the bit and bobs of the meal, serviettes and accidental pancake sacrifices and they resettle. Zayn claims Louis’ tummy as his pillow, likes the soft firmness of it under his cheek and the way Louis can’t help but card his fingers through Zayn’s hair. He tucks his feet under Harry’s thighs and tugs Liam’s hand into his, listens to the way all their voices flow, lap like waves over the sides of conversations and bubbles between them.

“Doing good, Zaynie?” Louis asks, soft.

Zayn brings up Liam’s hand to press a kiss to it, then drops it onto Louis’ chest and watches Louis lace his and Liam’s fingers together, easy as anything. Harry is pressing kisses to Niall’s shoulder freckles while she absently keeps count, face smushed to Liam’s hip.

“Yeah,” Zayn says, “I’m good.”

He’s home.

 


End file.
